The Lockout Files - Spring Training

Well the big news in baseball of course is spring training.  Late February, all eyes have turned toward spring training and nothing else.  NOTHING ELSE.  Anyway, I know you are all especially interested to hear what I am looking forward to my trip to sunny Florida in ten days and I thought I’d share that with you.

Going to Games - Last year was the first time since…god 1999? that I hadn’t attended a Spring Training game and frankly 2020 camp was a pretty morose place on the heels of the Mookie ...

David Ortiz - Postseason Hero, Clutch God, HALL OF FAMER

Sleep tight, you couldn’t count the cost through the night
‘Cause it’s not right, it never was right
Come a long, long
Come a long, long way

The words belong to Simple Minds but they are so true of David Americo Ortiz Arias.  He started as a minor leaguer with the Mariners where he began what would be a career long tradition of whooping Alex Rodriguez, then in a Home Run Derby.  He went to Minnesota where after parts of six seasons he was deemed superfluous and young GM Theo Epstein was ...

The Lockout Files - Jon Lester Hangs ‘Em Up

After 16 years, 200 wins and three World Series titles Jon Lester is hanging up his spikes.  I have to admit I never really warmed to Jon Lester.  He always had an A-Rodian quality of seeming fake.  I never got the impression he was someone I would want to hang out with, have a beer and shoot the ####.  But hot damn could the man pitch.  Lester was an old school starter taking the ball every fifth day and stubbornly grinding it out making 30+ starts twelve years in a row. Of course when ...

The Lockout Files - What Could’ve Been

I hope everyone had a nice holiday season and you and yours are safe and healthy.  Hopefully 2022 will be a better year for all of us.

With that out of the way I thought I might kill a little time with a “What Could’ve Been” team from my lifetime.  What I’m talking about should become clear fairly quickly;

1B - Nick Esasky - We start with a twofer.  What if the Sox kept big Nick and what if he stayed healthy.  With all due respect to Carlos Quintana (and who didn’t love Q) imagine the ...

Locked Out and Semi-Loaded

Chaim Bloom finished the pre-lockout period with something of a bang acquiring left-handed starter Rich Hill then in something of a shocker trading outfielder Hunter Renfroe to the Brewers for outfielder and 2018 ALCS MVP Jackie Bradley Jr and minor leaguers David Hamilton and Alex Binelas.  Bradley will get the attention here but Binelas is likely to focal point of the trade from the Sox’ perspective.  Binelas is a bit of a Bradley-like figure in that he entered his final college season as a ...

Thanks Jerry

Longtime Red Sox player and announcer Jerry Remy has passed away at the age of 68 from lung cancer.  RemDawg was the classic case of local boy makes good.  He grew up in Fall River and after starting his career with the then California Angels he was acquired prior to the 1978 season in exchange for young right handed pitcher Don Aase.  I turned 8 years old during that memorable season and Remy quickly became one of my favorite players.  On a team laden with slugging right-handed bats Remy was ...

Five Dumb Trades

Hey, let’s have a thread where everyone tells me how dumb I am!  Rather than just say “hey the Sox should get better players” I’m going to put five trades out there.  It is highly likely that these are dumb trades for someone but hey, it’s a place to start as we look at the off-season.

Red Sox Get: 1B Matt Olson
Athletics Get: 1B Bobby Dalbec, RHP Bryan Bello, 3B Blaze Jordan, RHP Connor Seabold

Sox Do It Because: Olson is a terrific player and under club control for three more seasons.  He’s ...

Meet the 2022 Red Sox

OK, enough waiting, it was a lovely weekend but now it’s on with the show.  After a 92 win season that culminated with a thrilling, memorable playoff run to the LCS we can start to look ahead to 2022.  The future should be bright for the Boston Red Sox with manager Alex Cora firmly entrenched now (do NOT re-read this post thanks) and Chaim Bloom looking like a guy who can pull the right triggers at the right time Sox fans rightly feel pretty good about where they stand in what looks like a very ...

What a Ride

Well that was a hell of a ride wasn’t it?  I guess it had to end at some point but my goodness you can’t ask for much more. Beyond that they are incredibly well situated for the future.  Chaim Bloom’s work to rebuild the system is proceeding apace and two years after trading one of the great players in franchise history, a move so many of us saw as a harbinger of disaster, that they’ve returned to the LCS should tell us that this team that has been so brilliant for the last two ...

The Boston Red Sox Will Play for the Pennant

In April 15 American League teams began their quest for the World Series.  Three of them are left standing and kids, the Boston Red Sox are one of them after a grinding 6-5 victory over a genuinely terrific Tampa Bay Rays team.  The praise for the Rays can’t be overstated, they are a hell of a team and are worthy of all the salutations.

But for now, the celebration is here with the local nine.  They.  Do.  Not.  Get.  Rattled.  This team has had so many chances to roll over and you know ...

Minors Making Major Moves Man

Well the Major League club will continue playing baseball after Tuesday’s thrilling Wild Card victory over the third place Yankees but the minor league season has largely concluded with just some Arizona Fall League baseball to follow.  With that in mind I thought a look at the system as it stands was in order.  The prospect hounds have been pretty positive about the state of the Red Sox system as the Sox saw real movement forward from many in their system.

The Good:

The biggest positive for ...

This Is Fun

Unbelievable.  All of us, and yeah I’m part of that, have underestimated this team all year and they showed us all what they can do.  Facing the presumptive AL Cy Young winner they chased him in exactly the same amount of time as Roger Clemens in the “Where is Roger?” Game.*. Xander Bogaerts who has been struggling of late came to life with the big homer and the hot Alex Verdugo did it again with a three RBI night including getting a good bounce in the corner that had Tony Clark saying ...

PLAYOFFS!

Unbelievable.  For the first time in their 121 year history the Sox will play a Wild Card game.  This will feature Nathan Eovaldi facing Gerrit Cole of the third place Yankees.  I can only wish Johnny Pesky could have lived to have seen a Wild Card game at Fenway.  Playing a Wild Card game is the dream of every young man.

OK, jokes aside I’m thinking of what MCoA wrote after the 2013 World Series.  This team, this ####### team. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t easy but man they came through.  ...

So Here We Are

The final weekend is here. The Sox dropped the ball pretty aggressively in Baltimore as the bats continued their silence from the previous weekend.  There is really not a lot of analysis to be done at this point, the Sox need to play well in Washington.  Given results this week things are a lot more difficult than they need to be but the fact is with game 160 tonight the Boston Red Sox still have their destiny in their hands.  As a practical matter some scoreboard watching will be in order.

I ...

That Didn’t Go Well, But The Situation Is Still Very Good

That didn’t go entirely well but it’s not nearly a disaster either.  As I said prior to the series that was a lot bigger for the Yankees than it was for the Sox and I said that assuming the Blue Jays would sweep the Twins rather than splitting with them.

The Sox magic number is now 6 for a Wild Card berth (8 to take out the Yankees).  All in all the situation is still good. The Sox fundamentally have their fate in their hands.  Winning four out of six in Baltimore and Washington is more ...

OK, Let’s Play Scenarios

OK, with tonight’s results in the books the Sox are locked in at worst being a game out on Monday morning with the knowledge that a win Tuesday would bring them even with whoever loses the Yankee/Blue Jay first game.  That’s a huge advantage for the Sox right now.  Looking at some scenarios the Sox should realistically be looking at 93 wins as a bare minimum (5-4 against NYY, Baltimore and Washington) shouldn’t be a big ask.  That requires the Yankees to go 7-2 and Toronto 8-2 to get ...

It’s A Sprint, Not A Marathon

After 5 1/2 eventful months with more than enough drama and excitement the Red Sox have reached the stage of the season where the age-old adage about a baseball season being a marathon not a sprint has turned on its head.  The Sox now have 14 games in 17 days to determine if they are a playoff team or not. 

In simple terms the 2021 season is already a huge success but the time for postmortems will come as will the time to look ahead.  For now a few random thoughts to kickoff a new thread and ...

Shrug

There hasn’t been much to add in a new thread lately.  The discussion is rolling as the Sox have tried their best to give us plenty to gripe about.  To say the last week of baseball hasn’t been ideal is hard to argue.  The Sox got swept in a frustrating series in the Bronx and have split so far with Texas.  I think SBPT has laid out a lot of good reasons to reel in our emotions about the recent play by the Sox that is not the nature of fandom.  I’ve been as frustrated as anyone even while ...

Things to Feel Good About

I think we can safely describe that road trip as “not good.”  I know I’m out on a limb here but I’m going to say 2-8 is not quite as good as the Sox hoped for the road trip.  Making it worse was that during their closest foes in division were rolling (in no small part to slapping the Sox around for two of the teams);

Tampa 7-2
Toronto 9-2
New York 8-2
Boston 2-8

Suffice to say that’s not great and the eyeball test certainly doesn’t scream “everything is fine.”  The team ...

A Game Out Of First

Sometimes it’s just good to remind yourself, the Boston Red Sox are one (1) game out of first place and five games up on a Wild Card spot.  If you had told me the Sox would be here at the two-thirds mark of the season back in April I would have laughed, caught my breath, and laughed again.

So why does it feel so crummy at the moment?

Well that’s the easy answer; because they are playing like it’s 2020 all over again.  Actually that’s not fair, in 2020 they were fairly entertaining at times.  ...

Dance With Who Brung Ya’

Barring something late and unexpected the Sox seem to have kept things pretty stable during the trade deadline.  They added Kyle Schwarber (and let me be the 500th person to say, man I can’t wait to hear Remy pronounce that) in exchange for Aldo Ramirez but no other moves were made.  Of course the Sox have made some internal moves lately with the promotions of Jarren Duran and Franchy Cordero and of course the one we are all keen on, the impending return of Chris Sale.  I’m not quite sure where ...

Gathering Crowds

At the unofficial halfway point of the season the Sox have exceeded everyone’s expectations and sit atop the American League with the Astros. They hold a 1.5 game lead over Tampa and 8 games over Toronto and New York.  To say this has been enjoyable would be a tremendous understatements.  Let’s revisit some stuff;

MVP - Xander Bogaerts - Rafael Devers has a slight edge in WAR and JD Martinez is just behind him but for me this is Bogaerts’ team and by extension, his award.  In a lot of ways ...

Time To Start Thinking About This Stuff

With All Star Break nigh and the Sox riding high (oh that’s good) we are long past the point of wondering IF the Sox can be contenders and asking what they need to do to solidify themselves. There are some areas where improvement is achievable but I think it is without much quibble that the most obvious hole in the lineup is at first base.  I still hope to see Bobby Dalbec figure it all out but when you have a chance to contend it is difficult to carry the guy “hitting” .217/.264/.413.  With ...

And Breathe

On the morning of May 30th the Red Sox (and the rest of us) woke up in Boston, looked out the window and saw the rain pelting down.  When the game was postponed and rescheduled for the following Monday the Sox were facing a fairly daunting 17 game stretch.  At that point the Sox had faced a fairly pedestrian schedule and took advantage to muster a 32-20 record that left them a game out of first place behind the Rays.  But the next day would begin a test, 4 in Houston, 3 in the Bronx, 1 with the ...

Feeling a Draft

Next month the Sox will make their highest draft pick since 1967 when they picked third (Mike Garman so y’know it’s not an automatic).  Many names are flying around, some familiar (Jack Leiter, Kumal Rocker) others not (Henry Davis, Jordan Lawlar, Marcelo Mayer) but at draft time I always like to look to past as prelude to the future.  Rather than try to tell you something about players I have at best seen in passing I’ll tell you to go Sox Prospects or Baseball America for all the gory details ...

Getting There

They got there in the end.  The Sox wound up arguably their sternest test of the season to date with a 4-3 record during this challenging road trip through Houston and Miami.  Sorry, New York, I get the teams with one World Series this century mixed up sometimes.

Anyway where was I? Oh yeah, an uneven but ultimately successful road trip.  Losing three in a row then taking the next four is not necessarily the ideal way to finish up 4-3 (it can be a lot of fun though) but as noted, they got ...

The Return

On Saturday at about 7:10PM Nate Eovaldi will bring his left foot back, then forward raising his knee above his belt, then propel his body towards home plate whipping a baseball at a speed up to 100 MPH to Christian Vazquez or Kevin Plawecki.  37,731 people, give or take, will respond happily, or maybe sadly, or maybe mildly indifferently.  It is that last piece of information that is so important.  37,731 people.  Full…bleeping…capacity.  100% of all available seats and standing room areas ...

Questions Being Answered

In English soccer the mark of the elite is the ability to get it done “on a cold rainy Wednesday in Stoke.”  I don’t know if a “warm windy Thursday in Dunedin” is quite the same but last night’s game had a bit of a feel to it.  I still firmly believe the Sox are a .500 team but they are answering questions at every turn.  One of the marks of the Francona Era was the ability of the club to rebound from disappointment.  Obviously some of that was the talent in place but the ability to put it ...

Finally Lining Up the Minors

At long last minor league baseball is back in full swing!  There have been some changes since we were last here in September of 2019.  The Pawtucket Red Sox are now the Worcester Red Sox, the Lo A Greenville Drive are now the Hi A Greenville Drive while the Hi A Salem Red Sox are now the Lo A Salem Red Sox.  Most heartbreakingly for your faithful correspondent the SS-A Lowell Spinners are no longer a Red Sox affiliate.  I can’t overstate how many wonderful nights I had at LeLacheur Park ...

Tap the Brakes

Even by Sox fandom standards the emotional mood swings around this team have been pretty impressive.  In 31 games it’s gone from;

“good lord they suck, Bloom is terrible” (0-3)
“they are back! Cora told us we should have listened!” (9-0)
“look at all the problems, they gotta this straightened out before it falls apart.” (9-10)

Inhale.

Exhale.

OK.

They have played 31 games and at 18-13 and since the big winning streak have looked like the .500 team most observers pegged them as.  They have ...